The Return of Total War
Understanding—and Preparing for—a New Era of Comprehensive Conflict
By Mara Karlin
Wars Are Not Accidents
Managing Risk in the Face of Escalation
Politics: Foreign Affairs Magazine – November 2024
Tag Archives: Deterence
Politics: Foreign Affairs Magazine – Sep/Oct 2024
The Perils of Isolationism
The World Still Needs America—and America Still Needs the World by Condoleezza Rice
America Isn’t Ready for the Wars of the Future
And They’re Already Here by Mark A. Milley and Eric Schmidt
What Was the Biden Doctrine?
Politics: Foreign Affairs Magazine – July/Aug 2024
A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is
Biden and the Search for a New American Strategy
“America is back.” In the early days of his presidency, Joe Biden repeated those words as a starting point for his foreign policy. The phrase offered a bumper-sticker slogan to pivot away from Donald Trump’s chaotic leadership. It also suggested that the United States could reclaim its self-conception as a virtuous hegemon, that it could make the rules-based international order great again. Yet even though a return to competent normalcy was in order, the Biden administration’s mindset of restoration has occasionally struggled against the currents of our disordered times. An updated conception of U.S. leadership—one tailored
The Return of Peace Through Strength
Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy
Si vis pacem, para bellum is a Latin phrase that emerged in the fourth century that means “If you want peace, prepare for war.” The concept’s origin dates back even further, to the second-century Roman emperor Hadrian, to whom is attributed the axiom, “Peace through strength—or, failing that, peace through threat.”
America Is Losing the Arab World
And China Is Reaping the Benefits
Politics: Foreign Affairs Magazine – May/June 2024
China’s Alternative Order
And What America Should Learn From It
By now, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambition to remake the world is undeniable. He wants to dissolve Washington’s network of alliances and purge what he dismisses as “Western” values from international bodies. He wants to knock the U.S. dollar off its pedestal and eliminate Washington’s chokehold over critical technology. In his new multipolar order, global institutions and norms will be underpinned by Chinese notions of common security and economic development, Chinese values of state-determined political rights, and Chinese technology. China will no longer have to fight for leadership. Its centrality will be guaranteed.
No Substitute for Victory
America’s Competition With China Must Be Won, Not Managed
Politics: Foreign Affairs Magazine- January 2024
The Self-Doubting Superpower
America Shouldn’t Give Up on the World It Made
Most Americans think their country is in decline. In 2018, when the Pew Research Center asked Americans how they felt their country would perform in 2050, 54 percent of respondents agreed that the U.S. economy would be weaker. An even larger number, 60 percent, agreed that the United States would be less important in the world. This should not be surprising; the political atmosphere has been pervaded for some time by a sense that the country is headed in the wrong direction. According to a long-running Gallup poll, the share of Americans who are “satisfied” with the way things are going has not crossed 50 percent in 20 years. It currently stands at 20 percent.
Why Israel Slept
The War in Gaza and the Search for Security
By Amos Yadlin and Udi Evental
In a barbaric surprise attack launched by Hamas on October 7, more Jews were slaughtered than on any day since the Holocaust. Thousands of elite Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip infiltrated small communities and cities in southern Israel, where they proceeded to commit sadistic, repulsive crimes against humanity, filming their vile deeds and boasting about them to friends and family back home.
Preview: Foreign Affairs Magazine- NOV/DEC 2023
The Sources of American Power
A Foreign Policy for a Changed World
Nothing in world politics is inevitable. The underlying elements of national power, such as demography, geography, and natural resources, matter, but history shows that these are not enough to determine which countries will shape the future. It is the strategic decisions countries make that matter most—how they organize themselves internally, what they invest in, whom they choose to align with and who wants to align with them, which wars they fight, which they deter, and which they avoid.
The Dysfunctional Superpower
Can a Divided America Deter China and Russia?
The United States now confronts graver threats to its security than it has in decades, perhaps ever. Never before has it faced four allied antagonists at the same time—Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran—whose collective nuclear arsenal could within a few years be nearly double the size of its own. Not since the Korean War has the United States had to contend with powerful military rivals in both Europe and Asia. And no one alive can remember a time when an adversary had as much economic, scientific, technological, and military power as China does today.
Essay: The Dysfunctional Superpower – Can America Deter China And Russia?
“Xi’s sense of personal destiny entails significant risk of war…”
The problem, however, is that at the very moment that events demand a strong and coherent response from the United States, the country cannot provide one. Its fractured political leadership—Republican and Democratic, in the White House and in Congress—has failed to convince enough Americans that developments in China and Russia matter. Political leaders have failed to explain how the threats posed by these countries are interconnected. They have failed to articulate a long-term strategy to ensure that the United States, and democratic values more broadly, will prevail.
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